SOURCE: Bender, Bert. “The Nature and Significance of ‘Experience’ in ‘The Open Boat’.” The Journal of Narrative Technique 9, no. 2 (spring 1979): 70-80.

In the following essay, Bender investigates the religious overtones of the concept of personal experience in “The Open Boat.”

It is an eye-opening experience for most readers when they learn that “The Open Boat” is based on Stephen Crane's own harrowing experience. And there is no question that what happened at sea on those January days of 1897 opened the author's own eyes; he would not forget it, even on his death-bed, where he murmured deliriously about changing places in an open boat.¹ In the famous newspaper report of the incident, he indicated that he would take time in writing his story; his problem would be how to communicate the significance of so shaking an experience to an audience whose inexperience in such matters would necessarily distance...